1. Field of the Invention
Implementations relate generally to information retrieval and, more particularly, to providing potential refinements and optimizations for query submissions.
2. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web (“web”) contains a vast amount of information. Locating a desired portion of the information, however, can be challenging. This problem is compounded because the amount of information on the web and the number of new users inexperienced at web searching are growing rapidly.
Search engines attempt to return hyperlinks to web pages in which a user is interested. Generally, search engines base their determination of the user's interest on search terms (called a search query) entered by the user. The goal of the search engine is to provide links to high quality, relevant results (e.g., web pages) to the user based on the search query. Typically, the search engine accomplishes this by matching the terms in the search query to a corpus of pre-stored web pages. Web pages that contain the user's search terms are identified as search results and are returned to the user as links.
Many companies currently offer add-on toolbars to improve the users' search experience. Oftentimes, these add-on toolbars provide functionality that is not available in existing web browsers. For example, an add-on toolbar may permit a user to perform a search right from the toolbar, permit terms to be highlighted on a web page, provide pop-up protection, and do other things to assist the user in finding information of interest.